On August 9, 2014, police officer Darren Wilson shoots and kills Michael Brown, an unarmed Black teenager, in Ferguson, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis. Protests and riots ensue in Ferguson and soon spread across the country.
Guest post by Stilton Jarlsberg
As surely as the swallows return to Capistrano and the Obamas return to the five-star environs of Martha’s Vineyard, rioters have returned to Ferguson to block highways, set things on fire, loot businesses, and shoot at police officers in loving memory of Michael “Gentle Giant when he’s not violently assaulting someone” Brown.
Not that there haven’t also been peaceful protesters, exercising their Constitutional right to be wrong about the whole “hands up, don’t shoot” myth.
What puzzles Hope n’ Change is why there is still so much anger and animosity considering that Obama’s DOJ not only completely (albeit reluctantly) exonerated the officer involved in the shooting, but also assumed supervisory oversight of the Ferguson police department and required them to make across the board reforms.
Does this mean that the protesters are now blaming Obama for alleged police racism, or are they simply saying that his DOJ is no better at protecting people from toxic law enforcement than his EPA is at protecting rivers from toxic spills? And if Obama is their problem, why are they marching in the street where Brown was shot instead of on the greens where the president is golfing?
(CNN)—When one man sat down next to a second man in a St. Louis light rail car and asked him his opinion on the shooting of Michael Brown, it was not the beginning of a discussion.
It was the start of an assault, police said.
The second man, who was white, didn’t want to answer the question. Then the first man, who was black, boxed him in the face. Two more African-American men joined in the beating, according to a police report about Monday’s incident.
It was caught on surveillance cameras on the MetroLink train and a passenger recorded it with a cell phone and posted the video online. It has gone viral.
Police confirmed to CNN that the online images came from the attack.
The victim, 43, was commuting home when a young man in a red T-shirt and cap walked up to him. The victim asked not to be named in media reports.
The man asked to use the victim’s cell phone. He declined, and the young man sat down beside him.
“Then he asked me my opinion on the Michael Brown thing,” the victim told KMOV, “and I responded I was too tired to think about it right now.”
The suspect, in his 20s, stood up.
“The next thing I know, he sucker punches me right in the middle of my face,” the victim said. The video showed the suspect unleashing a barrage of punches at the head of the victim, who covered himself with his hand and forearms.
The two other men, also in their 20s, joined in, police said. As the train pulled into a station, a security guard saw part of the beating and alerted police.
The man in the red T-shirt could be seen on video kicking at the victim’s face before the train’s doors opened and the assailants ran out.
